IN POETRY
Heart Work
by Marc Harshman
Marc Harshman’s third full-length collection of Poems, Woman in a Red Anorak, has won the Blue Lynx Prize and is forthcoming from Lynx House/University of Washington Press. His poetry collection, Believe What You Can (West Virginia University Press), won the Weatherford Award from the Appalachian Studies Association. Periodical publications include The Georgia Review, Chariton Review, The Progressive, Shenandoah, and Poetry Salzburg Review. He is the seventh poet laureate of West Virginia. marcharshman@hotmail.com
Marc Harshman’s third full-length collection of Poems, Woman in a Red Anorak, has won the Blue Lynx Prize and is forthcoming from Lynx House/University of Washington Press. His poetry collection, Believe What You Can (West Virginia University Press), won the Weatherford Award from the Appalachian Studies Association. Periodical publications include The Georgia Review, Chariton Review, The Progressive, Shenandoah, and Poetry Salzburg Review. He is the seventh poet laureate of West Virginia. marcharshman@hotmail.com
Straight shafts of shadow gone crooked
with the imprint of the trees that bore them:
the hillside threatens to collapse under their weight.
The neighbor’s mower is busy shaving his lawn--
the buzzing constant.
I can’t understand what it’s saying.
There is so much getting said some days
that it’s hard to keep anything straight.
What was crooked to begin with?
A man’s heart.
The sharp blades of steel.
The innocence of grass.
Strong fingers of shadow reach down the hillside
and strangle the noise, the words caught there.
They are dreams thick with promises.
I count them, and lift them up.
Suddenly, the world is lighter and the trees
disappear like my fingers do
when the light goes out and
they’re still tapping a rhythm
that remembers how the crooked
was to be made straight.
with the imprint of the trees that bore them:
the hillside threatens to collapse under their weight.
The neighbor’s mower is busy shaving his lawn--
the buzzing constant.
I can’t understand what it’s saying.
There is so much getting said some days
that it’s hard to keep anything straight.
What was crooked to begin with?
A man’s heart.
The sharp blades of steel.
The innocence of grass.
Strong fingers of shadow reach down the hillside
and strangle the noise, the words caught there.
They are dreams thick with promises.
I count them, and lift them up.
Suddenly, the world is lighter and the trees
disappear like my fingers do
when the light goes out and
they’re still tapping a rhythm
that remembers how the crooked
was to be made straight.